We've scoffed at a number of feature-rich handsets before that neglected to include a GPS among its list of talents. For some reason, navigation capabilities have become a required functionality for any phone that's at least upwards of the mid-range. The HTC Touch Cruise takes it a step further, not only offering a GPS as an aside, but puts it front and center of its overall functionality.
This second iteration of the Touch Cruise brand, this phone sports a slim 0.5-inch thickness, to go along with a 3.6-ounce weight. Build is solid while handling is similarly exceptional - a definite plus for any navigation-centered handheld.
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Display is a 2.8-inch touchscreen LCD with a 320 x 240 resolution. It's clear and bright, although not as sharp as some of the best panels we've seen from HTC. The biggest disappointment in the phone is the display's performance under direct sunlight (which, as a navigator, it will find itself in often), with quality suffering considerably despite remaining usable (barely).
We had a notable problem typing on the sub-3-inch screen. While we're used to working out QWERTY on 3.2-inch devices, its implementation on the 2.8-inch Touch Cruise was decidedly difficult, mostly requiring a stylus to properly compose emails and long text messages.
Interface, like HTC's current smartphones, uses the familiar TouchFlo 3D running over Windows Mobile 6.1. As you may already know, we love this particular UI and that continues with its implementation on the Touch Cruise, which adds a few GPS-centric tabs to the toolbar. It comes with the usual bevy of features as with HTC's other smartphones, including emails, IM, office apps, full HTML browsing, media playback and even a dedicated YouTube app.
Despite all those talents, the phone's main selling points are its GPS-related features, of which it has plenty. In the US, the Touch Cruise uses the CoPilot Live for turn-by-turn directions, offering text and voice instructions, 2D and 3D maps, day and night map colors, detour routing and multi-destination programming. A separate Map Search tool allows you to look up stores, restaurants and other establishments close to your location, even without launching the GPS software. The phone, by the way, ships with a 2GB SD card that contains all the maps you will probably need (actual contents will depend on which region you actually buy the phone from).
A new feature called Footprints take the geotagging of photos a step further, allowing users to add notes and audio to each image. With the app, you can plot a photo's saved location to Google Maps and navigate there with just a press of a button. It comes with a 3.2 megapixel optics module, by the way, which offers pretty decent quality for a phone camera, although it doesn't come with a flash.
Calls on the device are pretty good, with the occasional (very seldom) cut audio on our end. Speakerphone wasn't the best, however. Overall, the handset deserves to be called a GPS-phone for its rich set of functionality towards that end. Unless Garmin-Asus can outdo what the HTC Touch Cruise has so far managed so well, I see a difficult road ahead for their highly-touted yet extremely-delayed GPS-phone that goes head-to-head with this impressive handset.
Photo Credit: TechChee
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